1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic apparatus with a dictionary function of searching for explanatory information in a language using kanji characters and to a program for achieving the dictionary function.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a word is retrieved from the dictionary contents in a certain language, the word is basically searched for only with a keyword in the language.
To overcome the shortcoming, the following electronic dictionary has been considered: when pronunciation (synonymous with reading) in a target language is known, entering the pronunciation of a word in the target language according to the notational system of the user's mother tongue on the electronic dictionary enables the word in the target language to be searched for in conformity with the conversion rule of phonetic representation. One example of such an electronic dictionary has been disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2007-317163.
With the conventional electronic dictionary, the pronunciation of a word in the target language still has to be known. Suppose the target language is, for example, Japanese. If a word to be searched for is a hiragana word or a katakana word, it is relatively easy to enter its pronunciation. However, if a word to be searched for is a kanji word, the word cannot be searched for by entering its pronunciation unless how the kanji word is pronounced in Japanese is known. In this case, means for searching for a word is limited to the way a kanji word is input with the help of handwritten character recognition or the like.
However, it has not been easy for users unfamiliar with Japanese to enter kanji words by hand. Moreover, it has been difficult to realize the idea that they write kanji words by hand on an electronic dictionary without a handwriting panel.